Jets Into Ploughshares

Last week's federal budget was not kind to many low-profile but important agencies. One is the National Council of Welfare, which has operated for more than 40 years in Canada, providing information about Canada’s poor. It has been an excellent source of information for various other agencies addressing the needs of the marginalized in our country.The budget of 1.1 million dollars is now gone, and soon the council will be as well.

Sheila Regehr, the council’s executive director, said she was “rather shocked” to learn that the funding had been pulled.“The council has established a reputation for establishing regular, really solid, research on poverty,” Ms. Regehr said. “No one else in this country puts together information across all of the jurisdictions who all have different systems so that you can really get a picture of what’s going on.” http://www.ncw.gc.ca/h.4m.2@-eng.jsp

Why worry about those poor folk when we have more important issues such as purchasing F-35 fighter jets for billions of dollars? I hope you noticed that while the budget cuts were widespread and in some instances draconian, these "iffy" jets are still on the agenda. Yesterday the auditor general scolded the feds for not being honest with the Canadian public about the pricetag, and mark my words, those nine billion dollar jets will cost twice that amount in the end.

I know that Canada needs to replace the aging F-18's, but how can we do this in times of supposed fiscal austerity? Our Oshawa Presbytery of the United Church has written to protest this huge expenditure at the cost of other social justice commitments, but Minister McKay didn't take us very seriously, which won't surprise you. We tend to be rather quixotic, yapping about the strangest things because we actually figure that's what Jesus wants us to do. Jesus stood in that prophetic tradition of Isaiah and others who envisioned a day when "they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore." Maybe we can update swords to jets.

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